Habitat: What Temple Students Need to Know

Most importantly, how to get a free delivery (keep reading).

Get Spoon University delivered to you

You tryna be tricky? That email doesn't look right.

By adding your email you agree to get updates about Spoon University Healthier

Walk down any street on Temple’s main campus and you’ll be tempted by food trucks – they’re a much-loved part of our food scene. Unfortunately there are problems you’re likely to face at a food truck, such as poor weather, long lines, or a lack of cash.

Habitat was made to solve all of these problems. Created and run by Temple students, the app connects you to your favorite places to eat around campus. I sat down with Alex Winokur and Chris Thorn from Habitat to learn more – here’s what you should know:

What’s Habitat?

Photo by Caitlyn Heter

Habitat was founded by Andrew Nakkache and Mike Paszkiewicz, students in the Fox School of Business. It’s an online marketplace which makes food more accessible to students. Basically, an app for food trucks.

As Chris explained, “We have all these great food trucks, but you can’t really find any information about them anywhere online. On top of that, out of the 50 food trucks here at Temple University, only 10% of them accept card.” None of them offer delivery.

“[We] aimed, with Habitat, to solve all these problems,” Chris said. “So now, rather than having to worry about keeping cash on you all the time, students can simply just order on Habitat.”

How Do I Use Habitat?

Photo by Caitlyn Heter

Download the free app. Enter a Temple email address and create an account. Order your meal then go to the cart to pay and confirm. Here’s what happens when you place an order, as explained by Alex:

“So, you open the app, you place your order, the vendor gets a text.” The text tells them what you ordered. As long as they have the ingredients needed, they’ll accept your order, at which point, “the runner then is dispatched. They go pick up your food, and once they deliver your food they press ‘confirm drop-off.’ It’s as simple as that.”

Why is Habitat different?

Photo by Caitlyn Heter

Your delivery order can come right to you in any Temple building. In fact, after interviewing Alex and Chris, I ordered a crepe to my study spot in Alter Hall. All I had to do was message my runner in the app to tell him exactly where I was sitting. I didn’t even have to stand up.

Alex has bigger ideas: “If you’re ordering something to class, you know, go for it. We want that… because we have that access, we have those Temple IDs, whereas a GrubHub or PostMates, they’re not students, they can’t walk in here.”

Your professor probably doesn’t want you to get food delivered during their lecture. But maybe if you order enough to share with the class…?

What else?

It’s also a good idea to like Habitat’s Facebook page and follow them on Instagram, because you never know when they might share an amazing promo code like a dollar off because it’s raining or free empanadas just because. Yeah, that happened, and I bet you missed it.

All of the places pictured in this article (plus a bunch more that aren’t pictured) are partners of Habitat . If I made you hungry, try one of them out on the Habitat app for your next meal.